The increasing complexity of communication networks and their continuous evolution aimed at supporting the deployment of new communication services entails the need to continuously upgrade the expertise of operator workforce, namely of operators in charge of physically carrying out in-field interventions on the network apparatuses, e.g. in case of failures or malfunctions signalled by customers. Training the operators in a prompt and complete way indeed allows them to intervene on apparatuses in an efficient and effective way, thereby maximizing the customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, continuously training the operator workforce may be expensive and complex. Indeed, while involving several operators in the same training event in principle would allow reducing the cost of the event, the maximum number of operators which practically may be involved in the same event is limited by the need to guarantee availability of a certain number of operators for possible interventions.
This contrast often induces network providers to reduce the number of training events, or even to avoid training events at all. This results in the inability of operators to intervene on the network apparatuses in an efficient and effective way. An operator who is not sufficiently trained indeed may be unable to carry out some interventions, or may take a long time for completing interventions, or may even need the remote assistance of a more experienced colleague.
EP 1 911 215, in the name of the same Applicant, describes an operational management platform suitable for automatically guiding an operator in the execution of interventions on resources of a communication network. The communication network is provided with a network management platform, which comprises a master application managing a layered, hierarchical structure of agents, relying on a number of resource proxies. Each resource proxy creates and manages an “image” of a respective network apparatus. The network management platform also comprises a network inventory, that collects the images of the network apparatuses and is periodically updated by retrieving information from the resource proxies. On the other hand, the operational management platform comprises an operational manager which interfaces with an expertise inventory (which comprises operator profiles and customer profiles) and an operational log (which stores all recordings of activities performed by operators and customers). The operational manager supervises the operation of a layered, hierarchical structure of operational agents, which rely on a number of personal proxies. Each personal proxy supports the activities of a respective operator, e.g. in terms of guide in the various operational activities. To this purpose, each personal proxy is provided with a respective personal interface allowing interaction between personal proxy and operator. Personal proxies are connected to resource proxies according to a peer-to-peer communication scheme, in order to issue commands, to gather configuration data of the networks apparatuses, or to gather the results of checks of successful execution of an intervention. Each personal proxy runs on a terminal device, e.g. a portable device such as a cellular phone, a PDA, a laptop, that the operator brings with him during all his in-field interventions and provides him instructions via the personal interface, e.g. in a textual form. In order to generate instructions for a certain intervention, each proxy agent executes a workflow. Workflows are distributed to the various personal proxies by the operational manager via the operational agents.